Hacker News Reader

Comment by SamReidHughes | Hacker News Reader

Imagine a von Neumann who didn't drink and kept himself in shape.

I’ve always been curious about his drinking. Maybe the impression I have of him is misleading and he only drank at weekends or something. Not to compare my pathetic studies to him, but personally I’ve had to almost give up alcohol entirely to study math. I suppose I could also be getting old :)

He died of cancer, probably a result of nuclear testing. They didn’t fully realize how dangerous it was until later.

I wasn't referring to age of death, but mental performance while alive.

That's not a valid inference. Even during the era of nuclear testing, the great majority of cancers were not caused by radiation.

Now, SMOKING...

Folks nearest to nuclear testing died early of cancer. VN didn’t smoke. Look up the movie the Conqueror.

I grew up near SSFL so have some stories too.

That's nice. It remains the case that fallout will have caused only a small increase in the national background cancer rate.

https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/r...

Yes, only a “small” significant increase to those nearby. And we’re not talking only about fallout but manipulation in the lab.

It’s specifically your brand of risk downplaying that led to all these early deaths. Things are much safer today because educated folks understand the risks and prepare for them.

What makes you think von Neumann got any exposure in labs? He was a mathematician, not any sort of experimentalist.

The idea that his cancer came from fallout is just moralizing nonsense, the silly logical error of thinking that the universe operates in a way that punishes badness.

He was actually at Los Alamos, he was trained as a chemical engineer; it’s hard to imagine he didn’t get invited to see the demon core and other fun stuff, or otherwise breathe in some particles.

Yes, especially at a time when they were quite nonchalant about safety.

So, you think being in the room with the "demon core" was dangerous even when it wasn't being used? The radiation from it in a non-critical state would have been very small. If he had been there during a criticality accident it would have been recorded.

I think you're just waving your hands here because you have no evidence to support the claim.

Um, yeah, I stated all the evidence at hand. If you’re looking for a strong convincing case, I ain’t giving one.

And the likely cause wouldn’t be some gamma rays, it’d be from ingesting radioactive or chemically harmful matter.

So, your theory is he licked that plutonium sphere when he was in there?

Sounds legit!

The argument is that it's plausible, not certain.

Everyone (and many family members) working at SSFL 15 years later died early of contamination. They were careless in those days. Probably had a few buckets of the stuff laying around like at the Grand Canyon gift shop.

There wasn't just testing, but a whole bunch of other nuclear and chemical research these scientists were exposed to.

Smokers lungs experience something like 1000x more radiation than a visit near Chernobyl. My dad was a student of von Neumann. In the 50's it was fashionable to smoke, drink martinis, and drink lots of coffee, and exercise was for chumps. My dad didn't live even as long as von Neumann, and died of a heart attack.

VN didn’t smoke and your first sentence is obviously exaggerated.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com